THE PLETHORA PROJECT
Plethora-Project is a design studio with a mission to accelerate computational literacy in the frame of Architecture and Design. The project was inspired by the "show me your screens" motto of the TopLap live-coding group attempting to get rid of Obscurantism in digital design.
The project was initiated in 2011 as a teaching initiative and has grown to become a design and software development studio. Each project developed advances a thesis of how a repository of knowledge, manifested in building form or software, can be re-used by the public at large, developing a form of digital infrastructure for DIY initiatives.
The studio believes in a humanistic approach to design, placing humans as responsible for decisions, and questioning decision-making algorithms. The research in this sense can be described as intelligence augmentation through the use of digital platforms.
COMBINATORIAL DESIGN
One of the central premises of the Plethora Project is to find affordable means for design differentiation. Currently, the studio is exploring how to re-consider serial repetition of parts, but under a paradigm of combinatorics. This strategy entails that parts can be reconfigured in different patterns. Serialized parts will always remain more affordable than custom components, and by defining design difference through patterns, design becomes immaterial and sharable.
DISCRETE ARCHITECTURE
The studio belongs to a collective exploring the notion of Discrete Architecture. The current research has tried to move beyond parametric architecture, by engaging the field not only through form but also through the politics and economics of fabrication.
The collective recognizes the neo-liberal ideologies present in the current parametric agendas championed by Patrik Schumacher and believes that through this Discrete Architecture proposition, we can develop an alternative economic model based on principles of collectivism.
ARCHITECTURES FOR THE COMMONS
Architectures for the Commons is an ideology that emerges as a form of resistance to a parametric agenda and the socio-economical implications it entails. Central to the argument is a criticism of the competition model in architectural design, which has conquered the decision-making process of public architecture, parametrizing the free labor of young architects and design firms and devaluing the practice of the discipline.
By rediscovering the commons in an age of social connectivity, it is possible to make an argument for the production of design and value in distributed non-exploitative networks. The advocacy of parts and discrete architectures is rooted in a necessity of a vast combinatorial library that can allow design to perpetually remain novel in the hands of an active social system. The advent of technologies like video games comes to reinforce the role of human intelligence that is coupled with algorithmic augmentations.
In a time of a proliferation of neoliberal agendas, it has become necessary to understand the forces and infrastructures that can create an opposition. ‘Architectures for the Commons’ is the construction of a design framework that emphasizes the open source cooperation of architects with a community at large, utilizing socially enabled technology to accelerate the proliferation of value for multitudes.
JOSE SANCHEZ / PRINCIPAL
Jose Sanchez is an Architect, Game Designer, and Theorist based in Detroit, Michigan. He is the director of the Plethora Project, a research studio investing in the future of the propagation of architectural design knowledge. He is the creator of the video games Block’hood and Common’hood, digital social platforms that aid the authoring of architectural and ecological thinking to non-expert audiences. He is the author of the book “Architecture for the Commons: Participatory Systems in the Age of Platforms” published by Routledge in 2020 and the co-creator of Bloom, a crowdsourced interactive installation which was the winner of the Wonder Series hosted by the City of London for the 2012 Olympics. He has taught in renowned institutions in the United States and in Europe, including the Architectural Association in London, The Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, at the University of Southern California. He is currently at the University of Michigan, where he is an Associate Professor at the Taubman College School of Architecture. His research “Architecture for the Commons” designs and interrogates social media platforms as tools with the potential to author architectural content in the public domain.